


Theoretical

by tahanrien



Category: Tomb Raider (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/F, Friends With Benefits, Friends to Lovers, Soul Bond
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-18
Updated: 2017-12-18
Packaged: 2019-02-16 08:24:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,857
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13050210
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tahanrien/pseuds/tahanrien
Summary: After Yamatai, Sam wakes up with bruises, a headache, and a soul bond.





	Theoretical

**Author's Note:**

  * For [metaphasia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/metaphasia/gifts).



> Set after the first game, disregards additional comic canon.

The room Sam woke up in wasn’t hers. It wasn’t dark - there was a small light right next to the bed, turned up so she could see that she was in the cabin, metal walls, not very tall at all. Her heart was beating hard in her chest. She had no memory of how she had gotten here. She only had… images in her mind, strange words, screams and she remembered the wind tugging hard at her body, ripping her back and forth like she was merely a plaything; she remembered the feeling of being struck by lightning; she remembered feeling powerful, the world at her feet, the weather in her hands, but had that really been her…

Was she really herself…

Only then did she register the sound of waves, the creak of a ship, so familiar by now after so many weeks they spent on the sea, and the heavy movement, up and down, that told her that they were moving. That they had escaped.

That they had left Yamatai and Himiko behind.

Sam breathed out and let herself fall back onto the covers of the bunk bed. They smelled slightly rotten, and the mattress was hard under her back, but after what felt like a lifetime sleeping on the ground, against broken scraps from a crashed plane, and even on human bones, she’d have taken anything.

The chaos from Yamatai was still in her mind, though.

And it was like something was still calling for her, only she couldn’t make out its voice.

“Sam, Sam,” it whispered.

Sam stared up into the darkness. She did not hear the door being pushed open, as it was drowned out by the high waves crashing against the ship. Sam wondered if the storm had followed them, but at the same time, whatever she felt in her chest, that heaviness, a strange pull in her stomach and her heart and her mind… it didn’t feel like it was connected to the storm.

And Sam wasn’t sure if that was better, or worse.

“Sam,” someone said in the darkness, way too real to be in her head, and Sam would have jumped, but her body was too exhausted. She twitched and turned her head: There she was, her mind said, her heart said, and the pull she had felt before, it vanished.

“Hey,” Sam whispered back.

Lara smiled at her. She looked tired and beaten up, and Sam forced herself to move, just a bit, to lift the covers up. For a second, Lara seemed to hesitate, and Sam started to wonder--

But then Lara climbed in with her. Her hair, her skin, her clothes, they were damp from the outside, but Sam did not care. She wrapped her arms around Lara and finally, her mind was quiet

 

\--

 

“What will you do now? Where will you go next?” Sam asked. Every step she took away from the island felt like a fresh breath that brought new energy to her body. Her own flat felt too big for her, after such a long absence.

Lara looked back at her. Sam had spent these last days to map out which part of her was herself, and which was Himiko. Lara did not need to do that much. She was documenting what she had seen on Yamatai. Like the notes were the answers to all the questions that Lara had.

Lara rubbed her fingers against the page she had been studying. “Syria,” she answered, distracted. “Maybe. There are hints in my father’s notes…” Lara trailed off.

 

\--

 

Life went on, however. For some time, the strange tugging in her stomach lessened - it grew quiet whenever she was around Lara. It grew quiet when they could leave the ship and get the first real medical attention: When the doctor asked Sam to leave while they examined Lara’s wounds - in Russian, so Sam didn’t understand, but Lara did, of course. Sam got up to leave even though every single cell in her body was telling her to stay with Lara. 

Then it was Lara, who said: “Let her stay, “ first in Russian, then in English. Something settled in Sam’s chest.

Lara looked bad.

She looked good, in some way: She looked stronger than ever and there was a light inside her, a light in her eyes, a certain shine. Sam was sure that the same light had been there before, every time Lara had talked about her father, had talked about the mission she had put herself on, but it had been dimmed before. Dimmed by what others had said, about her father, about her.

But Lara also looked bad: She looked bruised and the doctor, as Lara would translate later, told her about her broken rips, about her stomach, and her legs, and her arms, her hands, and it was like there was no part of Lara that was not broken in some way.

Sam’s chest sang with relief when she got to hug Lara outside of the doctor’s office.

But then they went back home, and Sam went back to her place, and Lara didn’t come with her. She went to her father’s place, his office, locked the doors, and when they met up again, Lara never talked about what she did all day. The light seemed to have taken over her eyes: She looked like a woman obsessed.

And each day, each time they parted, the pull in Sam’s chest got worse.

They didn’t have sex anymore. They used to, for years, and Sam had loved the intimacy it gave their friendship. That no matter what, there was always Lara: For every single thing in Sam’s life. But something had shifted in Yamatai. All that happened to them there, had it been too much for their friendship?

And on sleepless nights, Sam wondered about that.

There were many sleepless nights.

 

\--

 

Sam went to a cardiologist to find out what was going on with her heart, but they found nothing.

When she forgot her umbrella in a café, after meeting Lara there: Sam went back; she found Lara at the door, watching the rain, rubbing her chest, like she was feeling the pain too.

And when Lara told her she would leave for Syria tomorrow - for the next piece of the puzzle that was her father’s research -, Sam cried herself to sleep that night, clutching her chest and gasping because of the pain.

 

\--

 

The second night was not easier. Sam could barely leave the bed all day. Her chest felt like a giant black hole, swallowing all there was until nothing but the pain remained. She hit her chest, knocked her lamp off the night table, anything to make it stop.

She did hear the door opening this time, but if it was someone trying to break in, she would not care at all: It would be better to be killed than to stay like this.

It wasn’t an intruder though.

“Did you break in?” Sam asked, trying for humor, but she knew she was failing. She looked bad, she did not need a mirror to know. She was sweaty, and her skin was ashy. She hadn’t washed her hair or her face or her teeth or her body for two days. Or more.

When she looked up, sweat burning in her eyes, Lara looked just as bad as she did. “Don’t you remember, I have the key,” Lara managed to croak out. She kicked the door closed behind her. 

“I thought you would be gone by now,” Sam said. She had imagined Lara on a plane already, halfway across the Mediterranean Sea. Instead, Lara was here, in her flat, where she had not been for a long time.

Lara just shook her head. “I’m not, though,” she said, “I--” but she broke off before she could explain herself.

Lara stood there awkwardly until she took off her jacket and Sam was reminded of the days after Yamatai - how, instead of going to the cabin Lara had been invited to sleep in, she had come to Sam’s, night after night. She had not hesitated back then, after the first night. She had crawled into Sam’s bed again and again, and Sam had lifted her covers for her, again and again, until she could not imagine ever falling asleep without the steady drum of Lara’s heart near her.

What had happened to them, Sam wondered, but she didn’t say anything out loud.

Sam huffed. “Come here then,” she said, “it’s the middle of the night.”

It wasn’t: Right after she said it, Sam peeked at the window. Broad daylight was streaming in, leaving a blinding stripe of light against Sam’s carpet. But Lara didn’t call her out on it, and Sam didn’t care.

Because with every step that Lara came closer, the pain lessened.

Instead, Sam’s heart sang: For the first time since the days after Yamatai, she felt alive again. Lara’s face changed with each step she came closer too. Like chains falling off from her shoulders, the lines on her face, the frown disappeared.

Lara almost looked like the Lara Sam knew before… before Yamatai, before Himiko, before all this soul bond shit.

Lara slipped under the covers and she was warm. She smelled like dusty books, probably from her father’s library and even a bit like what Sam identified as the classic airport smell. Sam liked to think that Lara had been there, that she had been ready to board the plane, that she had been leaving and then she had paused.

And then Lara had come back to Sam.

The thought made Sam smile and she cuddled close to Lara, pressed herself against her, with her heart telling her to keep Lara close, keep her right here -- until sleep dragged Sam under.

Just before Sam fell asleep, Lara whispered against the side of her head, soft like the playful kisses they used to give each other: “You feel it too,” Lara said, and she pressed her hand against Sam’s chest, just above her breasts, “I read about it. There are so many stories, soul bonding, pain sharing, red strings of fate… It binds us together. It will be like we are in love. But don’t worry, I will take care of it.” Her voice was like a kiss against Sam’s temple.

The next day, all plans of Syria have been pushed back. Instead, Lara spread out a map of medieval Germany on Sam’s kitchen table.

 

\--

 

“I want to come with you,” Sam said.

“I can’t see you hurt again,” Lara shook her head.

“I will be hurt anyway because I love you,” Sam muttered, not softly enough that it could not be overheard. No matter how cheesy it sounded. ‘I will be hurt because of our bond,’ she did not add.

She missed the painful tug at the corner of Lara’s mouth at the words. Had she not missed it, she would have regretted these words.

But they had been friends for long, and they had been fucking for almost as long, and Sam knew how to make Lara do something even when she was being stubborn.

In the end, Lara had a second set of plane tickets in her hand.

 

\--

 

The change of seasons brought rain and even more rain. As per Lara’s instructions, Sam had packed a lot of the right things, but still, little had her prepared for the squelching in her rain boots, filled to the brim with water, as she trudged after Lara. The rain was pouring down around them, so she could not even see where they were going. How Lara could see anything, Sam did not know.

Once they had reached the catacombs of the city, Sam thought it should have been better. They were out of the rain and the howling of the wind lay behind her -- the wind reminded Sam of Himiko. Instead, they traded the heavy rain for the smell of death and rot, that sewer smell they now were familiar with. Sam pushed on because Lara did as well. Sometimes she felt a twinge of how proud Lara was of her, through the bond.

She did not tell Lara - she was sure Lara knew because she had felt it too.

At night, in the hotel, Sam showered in water that was almost boiling and put three sets of covers over Lara and herself. It was good to feel Lara like this: Closer than anyone had ever been, with her voice, and her smile, and the way she walked. Sam had missed sex with Lara in England when they had seen each other regularly for something akin to dates. But it was only now that they were out here, in Lara’s element, that Sam realized how much every aspect of their friendship meant to her.

And a part of Sam asked herself, quietly, “but do you want to break the bond?”

The bond adapted with them and with every morning they spent together, every morning they woke up, legs tangled and pressed close… It sang with joy when Sam could feel Lara breathing. Just the tiny movement of her chest against Sam’s own. It was not so different from before. From laughing, and from drunken and not-so-drunken convenient sex. From the bright and solid light of the friendship that they shared. The bond grew, slightly, stretched out, until they did not even have to be close to feel each other.

And yet, there was more.

“I love you,” Sam whispered against Lara’s sleeping form and watched her pull away from Sam, even in her sleep, at least until Sam could wrap her arms around Lara again.

And then: After eight days in the collapsed ruins of an archive, buried underground right in Cologne, Germany, they found the rumored ancient knife, meant to cut a soul bond.

 

\--

 

They arrived back home in the early hours of the day, a red-eye train from France, and here they were. Even Lara looked tired. And maybe that was the reason why she did not protest when Sam tugged at her arm when they arrived at Sam’s place. Maybe that was the reason why instead of heading home and getting away with this inconvenient soul bond, Lara stumbled inside Sam’s flat. Maybe that was the reason why Lara snuggled into Sam the second they hit the sheets, and she did not let go of Sam’s hands once, their fingers intertwined.

Maybe that was the reason why when Sam woke up in the morning and the fridge was empty and she went out to get them something-- Maybe that was the reason why when Sam came back, Lara had woken up and was waiting for her-- Maybe that was the reason Sam had barely kicked off her boots before she was pressed against the door, Lara’s mouth hot against hers, Lara’s hands roaming over her body, soft against her breasts and rough between her legs.

Maybe Lara was just tired.

“Ah,” Sam said, naked, later. She looked at the picture of them on her desk, a copy of the original lost to the sea-wrath of Himiko. Lara looked so young in there, but then again, so did Sam.

Sam turned back. Lara was sitting on the bed, cross-legged, still naked. The soft rainy English morning sun shone through the window and lit up her back and shoulders. And all the scars there. So many of which Lara had gotten for Sam.

Sam felt something settle in her chest, heavy and warm, curled like a soft rabbit right around her heart. Sam knew that she would miss that feeling once Lara used the knife to cut their soul bond. A soul bond that had not hurt in weeks. But Sam had always known that it would come to this.

Lara was, even now, playing with the knife in her hands, but she looked up at Sam’s “Ah”.

“Just the picture,” Sam said, “The way it looks. I was so in love with you back then already. So gone…”

Strange, Sam thought. She had never told Lara that.

Sam went to the kitchen to make them another coffee and she missed the way Lara looked after her. When Sam came back, two mugs of freshly brewed goodness in her hands, Lara was gone.

Sam breathed out. Lara was gone, again. To Syria, most likely. To go on, to find whatever mysteries her father had left her. After all, without the bond, she was free to go. Sam wanted to grab her chest, at the bond still pulsing strongly, and she wanted to cradle it close, feel the soft warmth. Because soon, any minute, it would be gone.

Any minute now.

Any minute now.

Any minute now.

 

\--

 

The envelope was wrapped carefully and a little bulky, but Sam also had gotten a lot of mail the last week she had been gone, so she almost threw the envelope away as well. It held three things: A plane ticket to Damascus, Syria; the soul bond-cutting knife; and a note, which read, “It wasn’t the soul bond for me either. I have been in love with you for years as well.”

**Author's Note:**

> Dear metaphasia, I wish you a great Yuletide!


End file.
